Maion dropped to her knees again and swept her wings forward. Michael’s words echoed in her head and filled her body with a warm glow for she sensed the truth behind them. She belonged now, she was a part of his clan.
Third Legion, New Roman Republic, Hell
“Salve Tribune Madeuce. How does the Third Legion prosper in the service of the Senate and the People?”
“Well, First Consul. Soon, with your permission, we will demonstrate our skills.” Tribune Madeuce had to get his mind around the formal statements that were expected and the style of phrasing required by the standards of New Rome. Gaius Julius had made it clear that the Army served the Senate and the People, never the ruling Consuls. He had read the histories of what Rome had become after his death and pinpointed the Praetorian Guard as being one of the primary causes of the downfall. One amongst many of course, but he was determined to eliminate all those that lay within his reach.
In front of him, a group of armored personnel carriers moved on to the exercise ground, dodging from cover to cover. Madeuce recognize them instantly, a Polish derivative of the BMP-2 built especially for the daemons. Three extra suspension wheels to allow for the extra weight, a higher and longer body shell to provide protection for the crew and an open passenger compartment. Armament was three 23mm cannon, one at the front of the passenger compartment, the other two on its sides. All three guns could fire forward, alternatively they provided a 360 degree field of fire around each vehicle. Derivatives of the same vehicle had 120mm automatic mortars in the back. Unlike the infantry vehicles, the mortar carriers and the other specialist support equipment was crewed by second-life humans.
Overhead, Madeuce heard the howl of inbound artillery. Explosions hammered at the “angelic defensive position” droning it in fire and steel “Sir, we’re rationing fire, one gun is representing each battery of four. Cuts down expense.”
“Very good Tribune. The gunners?”
“A mixture of Second-Life humans, mostly artillerymen we have recruited, and daemons. The daemons do the heavy lifting, feeding the guns. Their strength means we can hold a slightly higher instantaneous rate of fire and a much higher sustained rate of fire than a human artillery battery. I wouldn’t care to pitch us against an MLRS battery though.”
The armored personnel carriers were raking the “enemy” position with bursts of cannon fire, the tracer rounds lacing it with fire. Then the artillery fire ceased and there was a sudden blast of fire from the mortars. Simultaneously, the daemons in the infantry units rose to their feet and charged across the ground, their chromed bayonets flashing in the dim red light, for all the world looking as if they were already stained with the blood of their enemies. That was a human perception though, the wild primary colors of daemonic blood were still baffling scientists. The charge went home, supported by the fire from the mortars, machine guns and auto-cannon of the support units. The daemons cheered, the “battle” was won.
A few minutes later, the display force was drawn up for inspection. Gaius Julius walked down the lines of infantry, giving the impression to each human and daemon that he had, just for a second, stopped and noted each one individually. Caesar stopped in front of one daemon rifleman and looked carefully at his turn-out. “Well presented, excellent turn-out. Your name is?”
The daemon smacked his chest with his fist then stretched out his arm in an almost-perfect Roman salute. “I am Tesserarius Dripankeothorofenex, of the Third Legion, First Consul.”
Caesar gravely returned the salute. “And why do you fight in the Third Legion Dripankeothorofenex?”
“For the Senate and the People of Rome, First Consul.”
Caesar grinned at the reply the daemon had obviously been carefully taught. Then, he dropped his voice to make the conversation private. “And why do you really fight?”
Dripankeothorofenex grinned in return. “Because it’s fun, First Consul. The human way of fighting is much more enjoyable than just lining up with tridents.”
“Good for you.” Caesar raised his voice again so that it would carry around the parade. “An excellent turn-out and an enthusiastic soldier of good morale. Tribune Madeuce, promote this daemon to Duplicarius. Soldiers of the Third Legion, I am pleased to tell you that you will soon be assigned to join the Human Expeditionary Army for its assault on Heaven. Let the arrogant Angelic Host know what befalls those who stand against the Legions of the New Roman Republic!”
Chapter Fifty Seven
Conference Room, The Senate, New Rome, New Roman Republic, Hell
“Every time we tried to change the design, they beat us with canes.” The head of the sales delegation from Bombardier Aviation spoke with emphasized ruefulness.
“I did not think your companies treated people like that.” Gaius Julius Caesar was confused by the statement which didn’t seem to match anything he’d learned recently.
“Gaius, every so often an expression enters the language and becomes widely used for a while until everybody gets bored with it. This was one, I believe it started in the Air Force and has spread everywhere. It means that a certain course of action or idea is strongly discouraged by those in authority. They don’t really get beaten with canes.” Jade Kim turned her attention to the man from Bombardier. “What changes did you want to make?”
“The ones we had to make were mostly in the air intake system. The original Hawker Hunter had narrow wing-root intakes. By the time we had installed the air filters, the air flow to the engine was so reduced that it caused the Avon to be running on the verge of stalling. So we had to enlarge the air intakes to compensate. It helped that the original intakes were very inefficient by modern standards and our computer design facilities were able to clean them up a lot. All in all, even with the filters in place, we are getting good air flow to the engine and the performance penalty is much less than aircraft that had the filters added on afterwards. So, we thought by going to a thinner wing, we would get better performance. That’s when they beat us.
“Once we lost that battle, we changed the underwing hard points as well. We were lucky, there were 48 Hunters in flying condition and the RAF stood up an entire wing equipped with them. So, we have plenty of flying specimens to work with and a lot of the tooling was available. Here in Canada, Bombardier got the job of setting up a production line for them. The Avon was available, Rolls-Royce was selling them for power generation until 2006 so all the equipment for the engines was available. We took the Swiss-modified Hunter FGA. 9 as a baseline. That gave us two fuselage hard points, we recommend they be used for drop tanks, and six wing hardpoints. The inner pair are stressed for 2,000 pounds, the outer four are rigged for 1,000 pounds each. Total warload, 8,000 pounds plus the four 30mm cannon in the nose.”
“Boeing want us to buy the A-45. What do you say about that?” Caesar was watching carefully and learning.
“The A-45 is a very good aircraft. Of course, it costs three times as much as the Bombardier Hunter, has a long waiting list of clients and doesn’t carry the warload our aircraft does. It has five hardpoints, we have eight and it has only a single 20mm gun. It’s 70 miles per hour slower and only has half the rate of climb of the Hunter. What is more, as a non-American company, we can offer incentives that Boeing cannot equal. For example, we can take payment in kind. Oil for example, or minerals. Our bid includes a number of counter-trade scenarios that may interest you. Finally, Hunter spares are made in a lot of countries, you won’t be tied to us as suppliers. I believe you are having trouble getting spare parts from the Americans already?”